Announcement
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Barnaby's still not used to it yet, the weight of the ring on his finger, the way it catches the light sometimes and holds cool and heat longer than his skin does." Kotetsu and Barnaby announce their engagement to Kotetsu's family and the Heroes. Part 2 of the Official series. Sequel to Interruption; followed by Foolish.
1. Family

"What are you so nervous about?"

It's going on the dozenth time Barnaby has asked the question. Kotetsu's been edgy since they got in the car to drive out to see his family, fretting until Barnaby threatened to exile him to the backseat just for safety precautions. He cooled down a little after that, or at least tried to; the humming adrenaline currently emanating from the passenger seat isn't conducive to safe driving either, but Barnaby is willing to take what he can get, and he can more or less ignore Kotetsu's nerves as long as he's _quiet_.

But they're here now, and Barnaby has been waiting for Kotetsu to open his door and go inside for almost five minutes. He can see Anju at the window peering out at them, obviously perplexed about why they haven't come inside yet, though thus far no one has come out to actually drag them inside. It might help. The way Kotetsu's going someone's going to need to.

Kotetsu flails one hand at Barnaby, like he's brushing away the other's comment, just like he has done every single time the blond asked the question. "It's reasonable to be nervous. This is _totally_ normal, for your information. It took you _weeks_ to get up the nerve to propose to me."

Barnaby's hands tighten on the steering wheel. He congratulates himself, silently, on his fortitude in not giving in to the urge to strangle Kotetsu instead of the leather under his hands.

"I did not propose to you," he says as calmly as he can manage. "Besides, that is entirely different. All we're doing is telling your family we're getting married. Why is that so daunting?"

"You _did_," Kotetsu crows, back on his favorite subject. Barnaby shuts his eyes as the other man continues. "You totally did, Bunny-chan, don't lie to yourself." He reaches out to touch Barnaby's hand, brush his fingertips over the band of plain silver against the blond's finger, and Barnaby's breath catches before he can help it. He's still not used to it yet, the weight of the ring on his finger, the way it catches the light sometimes and holds cool and heat longer than his skin does. It's _extremely_ distracting and Kotetsu has cottoned on to that fact, keeps using it to win arguments.

Just like he's doing now. Barnaby snatches his hand back, pushes his car door open in spite of the self-conscious flush rising to his cheeks, and throws himself out of the car before he can think about it any longer.

"Come on," he demands, yanking Kotetsu's car door open for him. The older man cringes back but it's not from Barnaby, he's looking at the window where Anju is presumably still watching them. His distraction means he doesn't resist when Barnaby seizes his wrist and drags him forcibly from the seat. "Come on, we're going inside and you can tell everyone we're getting married."

"Woah, woah," Kotetsu stammers, nearly falling as Barnaby pulls him up the walk to the front door.

"Or I will," Barnaby says over his protests, levelling the statement like the ultimatum it is. "And you can explain to all of us why you didn't _want_ to."

Kotetsu whimpers but they're at the door, Barnaby is knocking before he can overthink the action. There's an ostentatious pause, Anju pretending she hasn't been watching them lurk in the car for several minutes; then the door opens, she's smiling warm and welcoming and entirely ignoring Barnaby's flush and Kotetsu's evident resistance to coming inside.

"Kotetsu, Barnaby! Good to see you." She steps aside, gestures them in with a wave of her hand. "Come in. Kaede and Muramasa are in the kitchen."

She vanishes around the corner, leaving Barnaby and Kotetsu to have a brief, silent glaring match in which they argue over what Kotetsu is going to say, when he's going to say it, and how fast they can get the awkward announcement out of the way. The sound of approaching footsteps barely gives Barnaby enough time to force his expression into composure; Kotetsu is still mid-unvoiced sentence when Kaede rounds the corner, and Barnaby gets the unusual pleasure of watching Kotetsu try to glare at him and sparkle at his daughter at the same time.

"Kaede!" he chirps, reaching out like he has every intention of picking her up. Kaede has a better sense of her maturity than Kotetsu seems to, at least; she allows herself to be hugged with the patient tolerance of a pre-teen but wiggles free before Kotetsu can devolve into actually petting her hair. The distraction pulls Kotetsu into the kitchen in her wake, which gives Barnaby a minute to compose himself and his irrationally fast heartrate before he stuffs his telltale hand into the pocket of his jacket and follows the other two into the bright warmth of the kitchen.

Muramasa is sitting at the table already, legs stretched out to take up most of the space beneath it. He grins at Kotetsu, nods at Barnaby, and shifts to make more space which Kotetsu doesn't take, too busy hovering over Kaede's shoulder to sit down. For her part Kaede keeps sneaking glances at Barnaby with the wide-eyed shine of the well and truly starstruck. Barnaby finds this embarrassing for his part but hilarious as it relates to Kotetsu, because there are few things easier to needle Kotetsu about than his daughter's celebrity crush on his boyfriend.

_Fiance_, Barnaby corrects himself, and goes so red that he is sure the truth must be written all over his face.

But no one's looking at him, not even Kaede, and Anju is talking to Kotetsu without turning away from a pot of something on the stove. "Was there something in particular you wanted us for, Kotetsu?"

Barnaby's gaze jumps to Kotetsu's shoulders; he can see the tension flood into the other man's body even through his shirt, imagines he can hear Kotetsu's panicked inhale even before he speaks with forced calm. "Why, can't I just want to see my family?"

"Not with how frenzied you sounded on the phone," Anju says. She turns away, apparently satisfied with her work, and fixes Kotetsu with an expression Barnaby recognizes from his long-ago childhood, the expression of a mother who _knows_ her son is up to some mischief. "You're usually anxious to get inside to see Kaede and today you had to be _dragged_ to the door." She takes a breath - Barnaby is caught up in watching her expression, now, rather than Kotetsu's shoulders - and the stern suspicion on her face melts into concern. "Kotetsu. Do you have cancer?"

The laugh catches Barnaby so entirely by surprise that it bursts out before he can even cover it with a cough. The tension in the room is too high, it's the most inappropriate response he could possibly have, but his own stress snaps into amusement instantly and he's laughing into the tense quiet even before he realizes what he's doing.

Four sets of eyes turn to him, even Kotetsu looking shocked and startled. Barnaby shuts his eyes, and covers his face with his hand, but he can't stop laughing even as he gasps, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just -"

"Is that a ring?"

It's Kaede's voice, and it stops Barnaby's laugh as quickly as it started. It's his right hand he has covering his face, he didn't think about that at all in the involuntary motion, and now he's frozen with the ring he managed to entirely forget about for the first time up in front of his face.

For a moment everyone is staring at him; then, as if on a cue, the other three turn their attention to fix on Kotetsu. Kotetsu looks away from Barnaby very slowly, like someone's forcing him; Barnaby can see him through the screen of his fingers as he glances rapid-fire from his brother, to his mother, to his daughter, before fixing his gaze on the wall over the stove as apparently the safest point.

"So." He sounds high and so breathy Barnaby wonders if he's not about to just hyperventilate and collapse where he stands. "We're getting married." There's another pause. "Not cancer. Either of us."

That very nearly sets Barnaby off again, but he bites his lip and fights back the urge. The silence stretches on for a heartbeat, two, three - then Anju smiles, and Muramasa laughs bright and delighted, and when Kaede says, "That is _so_ not fair," Barnaby's laugh is lost in the bubble of amusement that ripples through the whole room.


	2. Friends

Kotetsu's smile is wearing a little thin by the time he can make his way across the room to where Bunny is leaning against the bar. The blond is eyeing the crowd like any one of them could be carrying a bomb and he is ready to dive for shelter; how he manages to do this while looking cool and faintly condescending is entirely beyond Kotetsu's comprehension. It's all the older man can do to keep his face fixed in a smile as he comes up to lean in close, where Bunny can hear him but the chatter of their friends will drown him out for anyone else.

"So when are you going to make the announcement?"

Bunny cuts his eyes to the side sharply. "_Me_?" He's speaking even quieter than Kotetsu, but the edge under the word carries clearly to the other man's hearing. "When was _I_ going to make the announcement?"

"I told my family!" Kotetsu points out with perfect logic. "It's your turn."

Bunny huffs and turns to face Kotetsu properly, leans in to maintain the illusion of privacy they've established, but now he's so close the gold of his hair is brushing against Kotetsu's forehead and that makes it _really_ hard to listen to what he's actually saying. "Of course you told _your_ family. And you barely did, it was only because they saw _my_ ring."

"Which was an _accident_," Kotetsu retorts. Bunny's eyes are sparkling with irritation behind his glasses, green and bright and Kotetsu's not sure if the other man is going to kiss him or hit him if they keep going.

He doesn't have a chance to find out. The room has gone quiet while Kotetsu is distracted; he wouldn't notice when he does, except that Antonio steps into the bubble he has formed with Bunny and slings a heavy arm around Kotetsu's shoulder.

"Come on, guys." His other hand comes down between Bunny's shoulders; Kotetsu can see the blond stumble and almost fall under the unexpected impact. "It's supposed to be your party, you can't huddle over here alone."

"Ah, yeah." Kotetsu lets Antonio steer him around to face the rest of their friends; on the far side Bunny turns too, half-stumbling and half-walking, and Kotetsu's view is mostly blocked but he can catch the rise of color to the blond's cheeks, especially when Bunny lifts his hand to his glasses in a half-hearted attempt to cover his reaction.

"So what's the problem?" Antonio continues, and Kotetsu can feel his momentarily forgotten tension return to his shoulderblades. "You two gossiping over here like there's some deadly secret. What, does Kotetsu have cancer or something?"

There is a brief pause. The panic in Kotetsu's brain wipes clean into blankness for a moment; their friends are watching, most smiling or outright laughing, except for Keith who looks legitimately concerned. He should say something but he can't think; his brain is waiting for something, some trigger that he knows is coming for all that he doesn't know what it is.

Then there's a snort, a choking sound from Antonio's far side; Bunny brings his arm up to his face instead of his hand this time, but it still has almost no effect on the desperate laughter coming up his throat. Bunny laughs like a kid; all his usual irritated self-control crumbles away, his face relaxes into the soft lines that Kotetsu usually only sees when the blond's asleep, and even when he's trying to hold it back the amusement in his throat is perfectly audible, bright and sincere and delighted. Kotetsu's still facing out, so he can see every face in the audience go blank with shock, every pair of eyes turn to fix on Bunny as the blond collapses into giggles. It's almost enough to set Kotetsu off himself, the sound of Bunny's laughter and the utter _confusion_ painted on everyone's expression, but then some sense of comedic timing kicks in and he speaks while everyone is still watching the other man.

"So we're getting married!"

Kotetsu speaks loud to be heard over Bunny's laughter, but even then there's a long pause before anyone looks at him. Agnes is the first to react; her head snaps over to him so fast he can see the whip of her hair as she moves. Karina is close behind, then Ivan, and then everyone in the room is refocusing on him instead of his hysterical fiance. This doesn't _help_ matters; in Kotetsu's periphery Bunny slowly sinks to the floor, laughing so hard the older man is becoming concerned for the blond's breathing. But the blank faces turned toward him are really almost enough to set him off himself; he contents himself with a wide grin and waits to see who will pull it together first.

It's Saito, as it turns out. The scientist mumbles something that Kotetsu can't hear, at the distance he is at, but Ben is next to the other man, and when he speaks his voice is perfectly clear in the silence but for Bunny's laughter. "Congratulations are _definitely_ in order, yeah." He's starting to smile even before he lifts his hand in ostentatious applause, and Antonio is barely a beat behind in catching on the sound. Nathan is crying in the back of the crowd and trying to dab at his eyes to keep his makeup relatively intact. Karina's forehead is creased kind of oddly in spite of her willing clapping, but then Pao-Lin bumps her hip; the girls glance at each other, and when they look back both are smiling properly.

It all goes a bit hectic after that; the crowd converges onto Kotetsu and Bunny both and the older man loses track of the blond entirely for a while, though when he catches a glimpse of him again it seems the threat of Agnes descending upon him was enough to pull him back to composure. Antonio contents himself with occasional crushing pats against Kotetsu's back when the other man is least expecting it; Karina offers a handshake and an inexplicable flush. When Keith finally catches him it takes Kotetsu several minutes to realize that the other Hero is offering sympathy for the presumed illness that has struck him and his support in their decision to make their relationship official in this trying time. Kotetsu has only just put this together from the other man's sincerity when Ivan appears at Keith's shoulder, apologizing and pulling the other aside to explain that no, Kotetsu doesn't _actually_ have cancer, _really_, that Antonio was making a joke, and then Keith comes back around with nothing but joy across his face and no hesitation in repeating all his good wishes less the now-unnecessary sympathy.

It takes hours to work his way through the room; Kotetsu is pretty sure people are starting to circle back around for a second round of congratulations by the time he realizes that Antonio has been pressing drinks into his hand, and he's been idly drinking them, and he's going to need a taxi to get home safely. By the time he finds Bunny, the blond has the high flush of intoxication across his cheeks to speak to his drinking as much as the easy smile on his lips, and even drunk Kotetsu knows he has to get Bunny home fast or the blond will pass out at the party and prove impossible to wake.

They barely make it out; Nathan keeps kissing Bunny's cheeks, and Ivan and Antonio appear to have a deal worked out where Ivan distracts Kotetsu into conversation while Antonio procures 'just one more drink, it's a party!' Finally Kotetsu manages to escape, more than half-carrying Bunny out the door, and just gets the blond deposited into the taxi before he passes out entirely. He doesn't know how he's going to get the other into the house - it may take his NEXT power to get Bunny through the front door - but for the time of the taxi ride, he tips his head back against the seat and shuts his eyes, lets his fingers trail through the blond curls of the man asleep on his lap, and smiles in the brief eternity of the ride home.


End file.
